


Pride Before a Fall

by Sholio



Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Gen, Hiding Medical Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 03:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21008621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Continuing with the Whumptober fic requests, this one is a combination of "unconscious" and "secret injury." Stephen has a standing lunch date he doesn't intend to break ... even if breaking it might be a good idea in this particular case.





	Pride Before a Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).

> So technically Snick picked "secret injury", but because I had no less than FOUR people choose that one, I've been farming them out to related but complementary prompts. Today's prompt is "Unconscious."

Weekly lunches with Christine were a new thing, and a thing that Stephen was trying very hard (though not always successfully) not to skip or miss or forget. It wasn't a stepping stone to anything more than friendship; he and Christine had blown up spectacularly already, for reasons that he was increasingly willing to admit were mostly (okay, almost entirely) his fault. It was more like ... human connection, perhaps, would be a good word for it. And at this point in his life he ... well ... he had very few people he was willing to make that much effort for, and perhaps more to the point, very few people who were willing to put in that kind of effort for him. In fact, it was a list that consisted entirely of Christine and occasionally, on good days, Wong.

He had a feeling that he was past his second chance and well into his fourth or fifth chance with Christine, and he wasn't going to get another one.

None of which made it a _good_ idea, exactly, to go straight from a pitched battle with a horde of eldritch horrors from the Dark Dimension to lunch with Christine.

He didn't let himself think about it, just portaled directly into the men's room of the trendy little Greenwich Village café where they'd gotten in the habit of meeting. He stumbled out of the portal and caught himself on the side of the stall, and for a moment he could only gasp as the portal winked out behind him. He hadn't realized he was so depleted that just opening a portal could take that much out of him. 

There was someone else in the bathroom, and Stephen hastily flicked a clumsy finger to swing the door of the stall shut (even that sent another wave of trembling through him) and then waited until the urinal flushed and the door closed. He opened the stall door and cast a quick seal on the outer door, then caught himself on the wall in front of the sink and mirror as dizziness washed over him. He touched his side, where one of the creatures had managed to sink its tentacles before Stephen had ripped it off, and his hand came away slick with blood.

This ... wasn't good. He thought about just backing out. But that would mean portaling back and he was honestly not sure if he could open one right now. He could get through a half hour of light conversation, coffee, and sandwiches ... though his stomach clenched unpleasantly at the thought of putting anything in there. Okay, fine. He'd blame his lack of appetite on a late breakfast and have coffee and listen to Christine talk about her co-workers and manage to be a Supportive Friend(TM) for half an hour.

He took a look at himself in the mirror. Hmm, that wouldn't do. He looked about like he felt: chalk white, cold and shivering, hair straggling down his forehead in sweaty snarls despite the chills wracking him, face scratched and bleeding, clothes (except for the Cloak) torn and filthy.

... the Cloak. Right. He waved a hand to send it away.

The Cloak hesitated, clearly not happy about this.

"Go!" Stephen rasped at it. 

The Cloak reluctantly fucked off to wherever it went when he didn't want it around, and Stephen gathered what little energy he still had, and ran a hand down his body, watching illusion follow in its wake. His back straightened, his hair smoothed back neatly, and an ordinary black shirt and charcoal-gray slacks rippled down his frame to replace his ragged work clothes. The gauntlets were replaced by a pair of stylish leather driving gloves.

As the last flicker of energy replaced his boots with a pair of Italian leather shoes, his knees wobbled and he had to catch himself on the edge of the sink. At least he _looked_ normal. He stared at himself in the mirror for a moment, nodded, straightened up, and left with a firm stride that was one step (at a time) away from falling over.

"Stephen!" Christine exclaimed, rising from a sidewalk table. She held out her hand, and Stephen clasped it as briefly as he could get away with; at least any tremors she felt would be normal. He gripped the back of the flimsy little wrought-iron cafe chair, got his balance, and sat while she was taking her seat. Based on her smile, she hadn't noticed how close he'd come to taking a header onto the pavement.

"I waited for you to order," she said, pushing a menu his way. "The special is the Italian wedding soup. I think I'm probably having the Cobb salad."

His stomach clenched, and a cold shiver of nausea ran through him. "Sounds fine," he said, closing the menu quickly. "And coffee. Where's that waiter?"

The waitress arrived on cue, scribbled down their orders with a smile, poured Stephen's coffee and refreshed Christine's.

"You're distracted," Christine said, wrapping her hands around the cup. "Things you can't talk about from the, er, new job?"

"Got it in one," Stephen said, trying to ignore the ominous feeling of something warm and wet trickling down his side underneath the illusion. He could get through a brief conversation. He'd beg off early, tell her he had pressing sorcerer things to do ...

He realized that she was saying something and he'd zoned out on it. "Sorry," he said. "Hospital, uh, administration?" It was a plausible guess; she'd been stuck in a running battle with the head of Cardiology for the last few weeks.

"Yes," she sighed. "It's gone into arbitration again ... oh, Stephen, given what you're dealing with, you can't possibly care about all the details on this."

She had no idea. On the other hand .... "Lay it on me," he said. The more she talked about herself, the less he had to talk, which was good; he could use illusion to wipe out any hoarseness or shakiness in his voice, but short of outright voice-projecting (which he might not currently have the energy to do) he couldn't do much about the pauses caused by his shortness of breath.

That wet patch under his clothes was definitely spreading. He curled his fingers under the table and tried a simple patching cantrip to stop the bleeding. The resulting head rush as the energy was sucked out of him made him sway and grab at the table.

"Whoa!" Christine exclaimed, catching at her coffee cup. "Stephen, are you all right?"

"Perfectly fine. Please go on."

She gave him a look, the _Stephen, you are bullshitting me_ look that he'd unfortunately learned to recognize only after it was too late to do anything for a relationship he'd managed to thoroughly torpedo. Luckily, at that point the waitress provided a distraction by bringing their food, planting a salad in front of Christine and Stephen's soup bowl. It was horrifyingly reminiscent of some of the things he'd just had to fight. His stomach tightened again, and he fought to keep it off his face. Illusion could only do so much.

"Anyway," Christine said, stabbing her fork into her salad as if she wished it was the hospital administrator's head, "that's my life. How's yours? At least the parts of it you can talk about."

"Peachy," Stephen said. It was increasingly difficult to keep his attention fixed on Christine and not, say, stare dazedly at random points in the background. He was sweating again, a cold sweat borne of his need to keep himself upright and not paying attention to the scenery swaying around queasily in the background.

He'd never actually found out what happened when he depleted his energy this badly, with physical injuries into the bargain, and didn't immediately stop to rest and heal. It seemed that the answer was "probably nothing good." From a doctor's perspective, he was fairly sure it hadn't done any serious damage, particularly given his current ability to heal. He just needed to ... well ... summon the energy to do so.

"... Stephen?"

He blinked his way back to Christine leaning forward and staring critically at him across the table. Too late, he remembered she was a doctor too ... but she still couldn't see through his illusion. To her, he looked fine. At least he ought to.

"What is _with_ you today?" she asked.

"Distracted," he said. "A lot going on."

... and it only now occurred to him to wonder why it was so important to him to be here, and to be here and be _normal._ He hadn't really wanted to look closely at his motives. But these little islands of normalcy in his week ... they _mattered_, and he didn't want to fuck it up. Again. All he had to do was have a perfectly normal lunch and then get back to the Sanctum (sooner rather than later, it seemed) and recuperate in a safe and most importantly private environment --

"Stephen?" Christine said, now sounding concerned. "You're ... er ... rippling."

"I'm what?" He looked down at his hand, clutching the soup spoon, and in flickering shades of black and yellow, caught glimpses of the bloodstained gauntlet underneath the illusion. 

... okay. That wasn't good.

"I'm ... sorry," he said, dropping the spoon. The apology came strangely to his lips, and yet, more easily than it once had. "I'm going to have to cut this short. I just had a ... er ... emergency ..."

"Stephen?" She was half out of her chair now. "Talk to me. What's wrong?"

"Emergency ..." Alternating waves of hot and cold washed over him. He started to stand up. The world tilted. Okay, perhaps not. He could make a portal sitting down. "I'm sorry ..."

The world rolled in on him. He felt the illusion drop, heard Christine's startled gasp, and clutched at the edge of the table -- but somehow it twisted away from him, and he missed it, missed and kept going down, and he was on the sidewalk now, a sudden jarring shock. There was too-bright light ... no ... that was the sky, and it dimmed as Christine bent over him, looking down at him with wide eyes and parted lips. Her voice was a buzzing murmur, but the shocked tone came through as she did something to his side and it _hurt_ and then it was all ...

... going ...

... away ...

*

He drifted awake with a hazy, drugged feeling that he identified sluggishly as magical in nature. The uncomfortably close clinging sensation, as of a bedspread that had decided to turn snuggly, was probably the Cloak.

"You are an idiot," Wong's voice said.

Stephen shut his eyes.

When he opened them again, he found that was lying on one of the couches in the Sanctum's west parlor, notable mostly for having a large fireplace that was currently blazing with faintly greenish flame. The Cloak was indeed draped over him, clinging a bit more closely than fabric ought to be capable of.

A figure turned around in front of the fire, and he was so completely expecting it to be Wong that the sight of Christine's faintly sardonic smile undid him. All he could do was stare. Seeing her here in the Sanctum was such an incongruity that he didn't know how to deal with it; it was like seeing a zebra cantering across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

"You _are_ an idiot, you know," she said.

"I know," Stephen said, closing his eyes again.

He felt the couch dip under her and managed to crack his eyes open again. Christine leaned over, checking his vitals with brisk, practiced hands. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Like warmed-over death." No reason, at this point, not to be honest. His entire body ached. "How did I get here?"

"Your friend came."

He had, for a dazed moment, absolutely no idea who she was talking about. Then the penny dropped. He had managed to get back to the Sanctum somehow, so Wong must be involved. "Er. How?"

Christine huffed an exasperated sigh. "I don't know; I was trying to do first aid on you and he just ... showed up. Out of the air."

"I had a panic spell on you," Wong said from the other side of the couch. Stephen didn't jump mostly because it would have hurt ... a lot. 

"Thanks," Stephen said to the ceiling. "That's a lovely gesture of confidence in me. I didn't feel as if I was panicking _that_ much --"

"Not _your_ panic. It triggers on panic from people around you."

"Wow, okay, even less of a compliment than I previously realized."

"Turned out to be useful, though, didn't it? I admit that I wasn't anticipating the circumstance of someone panicking about your well-being, as opposed to _fleeing_ in panic --"

"Please stop explaining."

"-- but I have to admit that's an unexpectedly beneficial side effect." Wong leaned over the back of the couch and looked down at him with what actually might qualify as a smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Annoyed with you."

"Fair enough."

"This place is amazing," Christine said, looking up at the vaulted ceiling. "Is that an, er ... stuffed ibex?"

"Good eye," Wong said.

"Thank you."

The uncomfortable thought occurred to Stephen that they'd had time to actually talk about him while he was out. That probably wasn't a good thing in the slightest. Also, they seemed to be getting along alarmingly well. Christine patted his forehead and then got up, and Wong walked her over to look at the slightly alarming taxidermy projects of past keepers of the New York Sanctum.

The Cloak hugged him a little tighter.

"Yes, I get it, you're the one true friend I have," Stephen muttered to it. Which was patently untrue, as recent events had shown, but the Cloak seemed happy; it patted him with a coattail and then snuggled with him until Christine came back to make him sit up and feed him one of Wong's medicinal teas.

"You know you don't have to do this, right?" she asked, supporting the cup for him. He wanted to be annoyed about it but was too tired to muster the energy to bother, because he genuinely needed the help; he was still too utterly wiped out to either hold it himself or summon enough magic to hold it for him. There was a strange muted-feeling ache to his side; he could tell it wasn't completely healed but had been put back together in some way. It occurred to him that he might have been hurt a lot worse than he'd realized. Wong should have been able to patch a minor injury easily.

... and now he'd drifted again, and she seemed to be waiting for a response. He tried to run his sluggish mind back. The advantage to a photographic memory was that he could dredge up the last thing she'd said with word-for-word accuracy. The disadvantage, of course, was that he still remembered all their fights that way, too.

"Do what?" he asked.

"_This._ Practically kill yourself by trying to act normal for me. I've seen you at your worst, you know."

He grimaced, and then tried to pass it off as the taste of the tea. "I know. Believe me, I know."

"So what makes you think I'd jet if you cancel one lunch?"

"I ..." He hesitated. Examining himself this way was still harder than facing an entire dimension of soulsucking evil. Compared to looking into his own soul, he'd take the evil dimension in a heartbeat. "I ... it's not about that, not really. I didn't want ..."

_I didn't want you to think I was weak. Didn't want to disappoint you. Didn't want to lose one of the few human connections I have, and the only person who can connect me to the people I'm supposed to be doing this for. Normal people._

"I was afraid that if I skipped one lunch, no matter the reason," he said carefully, feeling his way through it, "I'd make a habit of it, and eventually I'd be doing it to spend the afternoon reading in the library, because I couldn't be bothered to go."

"Oh," she said quietly, sitting back with the cup in her hands. "Well, that's ... a valid fear, probably, and I get it. But, have some perspective, Stephen. I'd rather have you sit out one lunch than sit across from me bleeding to death." She smiled a little. "Have some faith in yourself."

"Myself is the one thing I've never had trouble having faith in."

"I don't think that's as true as you think." She set the cup aside and patted his arm. "Get some sleep. Your friend Wong has invited me for tea in the conservatory."

"There's a conservatory?"

She helped him lie down. "Stephen. Get some sleep."

It seemed like good advice.


End file.
